“With my reserved habits,” he says, “it would take a great deal longer to become intimate here than to thaw the Baltic.  I have only to ‘knock that it shall be opened to me,’ but that is just what I hate to do. . . .  ‘Man delights not me, no, nor woman neither.’”

Disappointed in his expectations, but happy in the thought of meeting his wife and children, he came back to his household to find it clad in mourning for the loss of its first-born.

VI.

1844.  AEt. 30.  Letter to Park Benjamin.—­Political views and feelings.

A letter to Mr. Park Benjamin, dated December 17, 1844, which has been kindly lent me by Mrs. Mary Lanman Douw of Poughkeepsie, gives a very complete and spirited account of himself at this period.  He begins with a quiet, but tender reference to the death of his younger brother, Preble, one of the most beautiful youths seen or remembered among us, “a great favorite,” as he says, “in the family and in deed with every one who knew him.”  He mentions the fact that his friends and near connections, the Stackpoles, are in Washington, which place he considers as exceptionally odious at the time when he is writing.  The election of Mr. Polk as the opponent of Henry Clay gives him a discouraged feeling about our institutions.  The question, he thinks, is now settled that a statesman can never again be called to administer the government of the country.  He is almost if not quite in despair “because it is now proved that a man, take him for all in all, better qualified by intellectual power, energy and purity of character, knowledge of men, a great combination of personal qualities, a frank, high-spirited, manly bearing, keen sense of honor, the power of attracting and winning men, united with a vast experience in affairs, such as no man (but John Quincy Adams) now living has had and no man in this country can ever have again,—­I say it is proved that a man better qualified by an extraordinary combination of advantages to administer the government than any man now living, or any man we can ever produce again, can be beaten by anybody. . . . .  It has taken forty years of public life to prepare such a man for the Presidency, and the result is that he can be beaten by anybody,—­Mr. Polk is anybody,—­he is Mr. Quelconque.”

I do not venture to quote the most burning sentences of this impassioned letter.  It shows that Motley had not only become interested most profoundly in the general movements of parties, but that he had followed the course of political events which resulted in the election of Mr. Polk with careful study, and that he was already looking forward to the revolt of the slave States which occurred sixteen years later.  The letter is full of fiery eloquence, now and then extravagant and even violent in expression, but throbbing with a generous heat which shows the excitable spirit